NOVEMBEB 6, 1903.] 



SCIENCE. 



587 



There is one type of college which I ha%'e 

 not alluded to before, and that is the tech- 

 nical institutes. These have been fostered 

 by the localities in which they are situated, 

 and been largely supported by the whiskj^ 

 money, supplemented by government aid. 

 I am glad to see that in the last regula- 

 tions of the board of education these col- 

 leges will receive grants for higher scien- 

 tific instruction, and I have no doubt that 

 in the near future such institutions and 

 schools of science will receive a block grant, 

 which will give them even still gi-eater 

 freedom than they now enjoy. These are 

 colleges to which students from secondary 

 schools will gradually find their way, where 

 they wish for higher education of a type 

 diflferent from that to be gained at a uni- 

 versity. 



I have endeavored to give a brief his- 

 torical sketch of what the state has done in 

 helping forward instruction in natural 

 knowledge amongst the industrial classes, 

 adults and children, and how gradually its 

 financial aid has been extended to sec- 

 ondary schools. I have also endeavored to 

 indicate the steps by which practical in- 

 struction has been fostered by it. I have 

 done this because I am confident that 

 ninety-nine educationists out of every hun- 

 dred have but little idea what the state 

 has been doing for the last fifty years. 

 Some connected with secondary schools — 

 I have personal knowledge— were until 

 lately ignorant that the state had offered 

 advantage to them of a financial nature. 

 I may say that the work of the late Science 

 and Art Department was largely a mis- 

 sionary work. It was abused, sometimes 

 rightly but more often wrongly, for this 

 very work, and it had more abusers at one 

 time probably than any other government 

 department. Even friends to the move- 

 ment of modernizing education found fault 

 with it as antiquated and slow, but I can 

 assure you that no greater mistake can be 



made in pressing forward any movement 

 than by any hurried change of front or by 

 endeavoring to push forward matters too 

 rapidly. In the first place, the treasury 

 naturally views untried changes with sus- 

 picion, and this fact has to be dealt with 

 more particularly when there is no great 

 expression of public opinion to reckon with. 

 At the same time it can not be stated too 

 strongly that the treasury has in recent 

 years dealt in a friendly and enlightened 

 spirit with all matters which could affect 

 the spread of science. Again, there is a 

 hostility to great and rapid changes in the 

 minds of those whom such changes affect. 



The policy must always be to progress 

 as much as is possible without rousing too 

 great an opposition from any quarter, and 

 I think it will be seen that the progress 

 made during the last twenty-five years has, 

 by the various annual increments, been 

 perhaps more than could have been hoped 

 for, and gives a promise for even more 

 rapid advance in the future. 



As an appendix to this address I have 

 given a brief epitome of the increases in 

 students, in schools, in laboratories, and in 

 grants which have taken place since 1861. 

 If to the last be added the amount spent 

 out of the whisky money an additional half 

 million may be reckoned. 



It will be seen that the progress made 

 has been gradual, but satisfactory, and 

 that, if we showed some of the results 

 graphically, weighed according to the cir- 

 cumstances of their date, and dared make 

 an extrapolation curve of future results, 

 we .<<hould have a complete justification for 

 prophesying hopefully. 



The question of the supply of science 

 teachers has already been referred to. 

 Jly remarks I should like to supplement 

 by saying that in the greater number of 

 schools teachers are to be found who have 

 been trained at the Royal College of Sci- 

 ence, and mostly at public expense — some 



